Bottle Attributes - Shapes

The shape of a bottle has a lot to say about a bottle's age and the
product that it held. Regional preferences and traditions help to
dictate what shapes were popular and for how long. Some forms are
noticeably rare or absent from some areas of the country while popular
in others. Porter beer bottles, which were used to bottle ales, porters
and stouts, exist in less than half a dozen forms in the Western
states, but were extremely popular in Eastern Pennsylvania, with
thousands of examples; even though these styles of beer were popular in
both areas of the country.

Special patents also dictated a bottle's shapes. Some patents were
more popular than others. The 1879 Hutchinson patent, from Chicago, was
used by over 4,000 different firms for their bottles, while the 1875
Arthur Christin patent, of the same city, was only used in a few dozen.

Bottles from different countries also vary greatly. Codd patent
bottles from the United States are uncommon, but are the norm in Bermuda
and other English Colonies. Hutchinson patent bottles are directly
the opposite, with over 12,000 example from North America and few others
in the rest of the world.